OK, I'm creating this sticky to just keep track of which preamp type is in which of these drives. Given how many head swaps we are doing on these, I think it'd be nice to get it down to a little better science, so perhaps we can more loosely match these when the exact part number isn't available. So I'm just going to be taking every healthy drive I get in here and posting the specs along with the PreampType listed when you press Ctl + L in terminal.

I'll be listing them all in the following format:

Model

Part #

First three of serial

FW

Date

Site

Followed by the Preamp Type

Please feel free to add your own, just try to follow the format to avoid confusion.

Trying to be able to cross reference which part numbers during which time periods use specific preamps. Once enough of these are collected it may be possible to see the correlation of where you can get away with a different part number which may be half the price of a donor with the same part number. Also, since you can't read the preamp version when the heads are bad, it'd be nice to be able to make a more accurate guess at which preamp version it should be by comparison to similar ones.

I'm already saving hundreds of dollars a week from being able to cross match WD drives of different models. If we could figure out a system to more accurately cross match Seagates, I think we could save a lot of money on parts there too. Already I've managed to handle quite a few cases using different part number DM drives just by making a close match of the date and site (serial too if possible). But, it's largely just guesswork since we don't have enough raw data to make a good comparison yet.

If a half dozen of us all contribute our findings based on the cases/donor we've got handy, over time we should collect quite a list which can later be compiled and compared. I'd love to eventually be able to set an approximate date range of what preamp was used in a part number during what era. So we could later consolidate the list to be more like P/N: XXXXXX from Site:XX uses PA: XXXX from Dates: XXXXX to XXXXX then changes to XXXXX after date XXXXX.

It'll take several hundred to be submitted before we get there, but we've got to start somewhere. I created this forum largely to post my own research/findings in an organized way, and hopefully get feedback from others in the process. The more we know, the more money we all can make.

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About us | Data Medics

We specialize in data recovery from failed hard drives and RAID arrays among other professional data recovery services. This forum is dedicated to the sharing of information related to the field between other professionals. Our belief is that we are all more successful if we share our knowledge rather than try to keep it all locked up as a secret.